


Primordial: Tales from the Beginning

by nibo



Series: Owl's Pocketwatch [1]
Category: Changeling: the Dreaming, Hunter: the Reckoning, Mage: The Ascension, Vampire: The Masquerade, White Wolf, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Altered Universe, Gehenna, Gen, Original Character(s), Red Star - Freeform, Wormwood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-04-24 18:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4930303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nibo/pseuds/nibo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know, there are a lot of theories about the beginning of the world: big bang, hand of God, pawns on a chessboard as infinite as we are small. They’re all relatively wrong. I think. In spite of what’s been written about me, I wasn’t around. Like the rest of the human race, it took a long time before I actually showed up on the scene. DeLaurent knew what so many others throughout time haven’t managed to figure out: the books of old were never meant to be taken literally. Tell that to the Sabbat. Times may have changed, but people still believe what they want to believe in order to make their nights or days a little more bearable. This is what I remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Burning City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tealinkrose39](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealinkrose39/gifts).



> The following story is based on the information extant in the Classic World of Darkness canon. However, not everything will truly match the canon as presented there. All alterations are my own. This story as it stands was the backstory for a campaign. Lots of thanks to everyone who played in them and asked for the world to be presented for your perusal. 
> 
> Extra special thanks to Q for the beta. You're basically the most amazing person ever.

The Burning City

 

At the edge of the city, Qayin gathered water from the well. He dipped his hands in the cool, clean water and drank deeply. When he raised his head, a man was standing opposite the well. He stood out from the ebbing darkness of dawn, his clothes a brilliant red and untouched by the sand that found its way into every nook and cranny of life. The stranger said nothing; he merely watched Qayin drink.

The farmer drew what water he would need for the day and paid the stranger no mind. When he had finished, however, he drew up water one more time and offered it to the other man. “You may drink if you are thirsty. This well is good and does not run dry.”

The man did not move.

“Sir, do you not thirst?”

“No,” he replied. His voice was soft and drew Qayin closer. “I do not thirst for water. I thirst for knowledge. For what do you thirst, farmer?”

A moment was more time than he needed to choose an answer. “For peace. For too long we have been at war with our brother city. They take the water, raid our crops, and kill all those who have tried to stop them.”

The stranger stared at Qayin with eyes and didn’t seem to see him; they looked past and through into something deeper. “If you could protect your neighbors and loved ones, would you? It is within my power to give you this gift. Would you take it and end your war?”

“I would.”

A thin smile spread across the face of the stranger. “Then you shall.”

 

* * *

 

 

His feet hit the sand hard on the far side of the walls. Behind him, the final sounds of revelry drifted into the burning rays of another scorching dawn. He’d won their peace, but at what price? Smoke curled in lazy wisps on the horizon. From the edges of his home, the silver-gray fingers looked almost pretty. The city had burned; his home would be safe.

Qayin tried not to trip over his feet as he set a course to the West. At least the sun would be at his back for a few hours. He needed shelter and some time to try to recall what he had done...

 

* * *

 

 

For three days, the temple walls had rung with shouted song and drunken carousing. The twins who watched over it held their peace. Within its walls, they felt safe.

“How long will this continue?” the white-haired one asked her sister.

“Until they have worked the surprise of their victory from their minds and buried it in the dirt beneath their feet,” the other replied.

Few people visited them, but in the darkness of each of those three nights, they’d felt the visitations come. Bright and scorching hot, the presence bore down on them until they felt as though they might catch fire. In the morning, neither spoke about the dreams they knew they’d shared.

“Milk?” one would ask, offering the crock of goat’s milk. The other drank it without word. Then the darkness of night would settle in around them, and, though they tried to resist, both would succumb to sleep.

 

* * *

 

The voice was gentler this time, calm and inviting. The walls of the temple around the sisters glowed warm and sweet and smelled of deep-summer honey. “Chavah. Lilit,” it called to them. “Why have you not answered our call?”

Lilit could feel her fingers curl and twitch beneath her sleeping body, but in the space of their dream, she sat up and looked in the direction of the voice. There stood a man - probably a man - wrapped tight in silks from far to the East. He shone like late-afternoon sunshine, giving off hues of burnished orange and gold. When she tried to look closer at his face, the features never truly became clear.

“What do you want from us?” Lilit demanded. “Why have you come?”

Chavah placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder and stared at the man, transfixed. “Who are you?” she asked. Like everything about Chavah, her voice was lighter than her sister’s. The people of the city said she’d been washed clean from within the womb and come out white as offering bones bleached in the sun, from the round of her parched heels to the blunted tips of her colorless hair.

Behind them, another voice rang harsh and strong as stone. “Chavah! Lilit!” the cold voice bored deep into their minds with a kind of commanding presence they could not fight against.

The sisters spun in fright, though Chavah turned more slowly, taken by the Man of Sunshine.

“The traitor Qayin has escaped the city. He has desecrated the name of God, and his crimes cannot go unpunished. You must find him.” The owner of the voice stood tall over them and cast a shadow that filled the entire room with an azure glow that froze the priestesses like the night winds.

The warm one walked around and looked at them both. His smile brought warmth to counter his companion: ice and fire to fill the temple. “We will give you gifts with which to find Qayin, as he cannot be allowed to escape. His future is marked and will bring ruin upon all those who give him shelter, all those who take him in. You must protect them.”

Chavah nodded slowly and closed her eyes. She answered for them both, and Lilit bowed her head in acquiescence, though the fire in her breast burned hot against the commands of these visitors. “We will do what we must.”

 

* * *

 

 

The reaching, grasping fingers of another dawn spread into the temple. Chavah and Lilit had already awoken. They sat beneath their only blanket together and drank the hottest tea they could make; it warmed itself at Lilit’s touch.

Hours had passed, but yet neither sister had spoken. Now, as sunlight crept into their home, Lilit forced words from her throat. “What has Qayin done?”

“I don’t know.”

Lilit shook her dark head.

“We’ll find out when we find him, Lilit.” The words had been coming more easily to her for hours. Lilit’s voice thrummed inside Chavah’s head in an endless, gentle song, and she knew the thoughts her sister had been unable to put into words. They didn’t form words, but Chavah knew her sister’s anxiety and confusion all the same.

They gathered the few things they would take - bread, skins for water, and some dried meat - and covered their heads to keep away the sun.

At the edge of the city, neither one looked back. They knew they would never see it again.

They did not mourn.


	2. Running

Everyone dreams, even abominations. Like everyone, they dream of the things they have done, of the things they chose not to do, of the things done to them. Qayin did not dream. He also did not stop. First one moon and then another waxed and waned over his head before he closed his eyes and saw the red stranger standing on a fertile plain.

“Why have you stopped, Qayin? You are not yet home.”

“I can’t go farther.”

“Why not? Your legs will still carry you. Your breath has not yet run out. You have no reason for stopping.”

The plain had no animals. Qayin knew from the color of the dirt that it would grow wonderful things. It would bear fruit such as had not yet been seen and bear it well. He looked at the stranger who stared back with heavy, coal-black eyes. “Why don’t my legs tire? Why can I run without exhaustion? What have you done to me? What are you?”

“I have given you what you asked for, Qayin. You have the strength and stamina to conquer any foe. Your power draws from the depths of the earth you so loved and nurtured. The whole world can lie at your feet, if you wish it. Your power is great, but there are many who would try to take it away from you. If they catch you, they will take what you have and kill you.”

Qayin dug his hands into the matted knots of his black hair and tensed his jaw. He’d had similar frustrations with elders back home. They’d spoken in weaving, winding circles that never quite answered the questions he’d asked. He released a slow, grounding breath and buried his big toes in the soil, soft and warm under his feet. “Who are you, stranger?”

A sly smile met the farmer. “I have many names.”

“May I have one of them?”

“You may call me the Copper Lord.”

Qayin let out another breath.

The world shivered around them. A wave, not unlike the shimmering heat waves seen on the desert, rolled across the plain. The colors for a moment shone with an intensity he’d never seen before. The Copper Lord’s head snapped around, and then Qayin woke up.

 

* * *

 

“Did we interrupt your dreams?” Lilit asked. She stood over Qayin, hands resting in a controlled calm on the jutting bones of her hips.

Qayin lay on the dry, cracking ground. To his left stood one of the temple girls from home, skin and hair brilliant white in the afternoon sun. He’d seen them in the city, always part of offerings to gods the locals believed in but didn’t truly know. To his right stood the other, nearly as dark as her sister was light, radiating fury. “How did you know where to find me?”

Chavah took Qayin’s hand and pulled him from the ground. “You were dreaming,” she responded by way of an answer. “Your dreams don’t belong to you alone, you know,” she offered once he was fully to his feet and the dust from the ground brushed from his back.

Myriad questions sprinted through his mind. However, only one seemed truly to matter. “Are you here to kill me?”

The sisters looked at one another. Qayin had asked the same question they’d thrown back and forth for days. Would they kill him? The Gods had demanded it; they’d insisted the farmer was too dangerous to let live, but could they end a life?

“Not today,” Lilit answered. “Today we’re sticking together until we find out what’s happened.”

 

* * *

 

   Running is hard. It's harder when you don't know whether you're being chased or exactly why. It's harder when there's nobody around and you feel as you’re safe because there’s only plains stretching to the ends of the earth on all sides. It's harder when there are Gods on your heels.

   The three of them trekked and hid for weeks. Lilit swore they were safe; there was nobody around. How could anyone sneak up on them in a place like that anyway? Chavah disagreed. "Not seeing your pursuer," she insisted, "doesn't make them disappear. They're out there. I know it."

   Qayin agreed, so they ran.

   None of them really seemed to need sleep. They ate when the felt that they ought to, but their bodies now survived on something else. Qayin hunted from time to time and poorly at that. He never brought back animals or fruits and vegetables. On his return, however, he always seemed a bit fresher, full of life. Chavah and Lilit knew from the few times that they forced themselves to sleep, sure that it would do them all good, that he had bad dreams, but Qayin never would admit to them. He woke asserting perfect rest, and again they'd run.

   At night, perhaps a moon or two after they'd found one another, they sat together around a fire and didn't speak. The air hung light, thin and cold, but nobody shivered. Nobody felt the chill. Hours later, their limited fuel they had burned down; the embers faded into nothingness. Darkness pressed in, and the stars shone brightly overhead.

   "They tell stories, you know," Chavah said as if they'd been talking for hours. The words startled both Lilit and Qayin, shaking them into reality. "The stars tell a world of stories, if you know how to read them."

   A moment of silence passed. "My mother tried to teach me once," Qayin said. "I was never much of a student."   

"They tell those stories, but there are others we haven't learned yet." Chavah raised a hand in the darkness and passed it across the expanse above. For a moment, the pinpricks of whitest light danced in myriad colors and then became quiet. "We just need to learn how to ask."

   Lilit looked over at her sister. "The world is new." The words tumbled from Lilit's mouth before she even realized what she was saying.

   "But not as new as we are," her sister continued. In the heavens, a single star spread its light wide and glowed faintly blue.

   "The stars go in all directions, holding and comforting the new world." Lilit raised her hand. The stars surrounding the blue one glowed and ebbed, pulsating in the darkness.

   Chavah pushed on, "And when the time comes for the next cycle to begin, they'll bring the news on swiftest wings."

   "Wings of blood."

   Both young women turned to Qayin as he spoke, but he turned to neither.

   The moment stretched on. The stars returned to their original brilliance, but for an instant, one blanketed itself in red, and then it disappeared. "We should sleep," Lilit finally said when there seemed nothing left to say.

   Chavah spread her hands wide as if taking in all the land around them. "We'll be safe tonight." She looked pointedly at Qayin, "A friend protects us in our dreams. He’ll watch over you, too."

   He nodded wordlessly to her, and the three lay out on the ground. All closed their eyes to the night sky.

 

* * *

 

Wherever her skin touched the Earth, Chavah felt warmth. The steady, consistent beat of Lilit’s heart echoed beneath Chavah’s shoulder. Qayin’s did not. She’d noted it before when they’d first found him. The rhythmic thud that reverberated in Lilit and Chavah’s own chests lay still and dead within Qayin’s. Chavah had yet to tell her sister.

“Reach out and hold them.” The kind voice washed over her like rain on the hottest day. “You can protect them from my brothers and sisters.”

Chavah turned to the voice’s owner. As before, he glowed like an evening’s sunset, a honeyed warmth slowly spreading from the ground at his feet. “What do they want with us?”

The slow shake of his head spoke unending sadness to Chavah who reached out to him. “They have committed their own sins and wish to cover them with yours. The heavens are not the place of peace and harmony your people imagine them to be. A war is brewing in our home, and I know it will spill over into yours.”

“What can we do?”

He shook his head again. “There is nothing to do. My siblings will follow what they think is right, but I will, too. Give me your hands, Chavah.”

Chavah held her hand before the stranger, fingers spread loose. He interlaced his fingers with hers. A rush of heat that started in the calloused palms of her hands rushed up the length of her arms and spread fiery fingers through her shoulders, legs, and feet as though the sun had taken residence in her chest to devour her from the inside out.

“When you sleep, you will be able to close off your minds. Create for yourself a home you can visit, a place of peace and safety. I will see to it that the walls are thick enough to obscure your presence. Bring your sister and Qayin. Your dreams will again be your own.”

The Dreamer, the name Chavah now knew for the Sunshiney Man, pressed a kiss to her center of her forehead as a favored uncle might a small child.

When she woke, Chavah felt the sun beating down on her face before she ever saw it. No god stood over them with a sword to cut their flesh from their bones. They were safe, for the time being.


	3. Separate Ways

“We can protect ourselves now, Lilit,” Chavah argued for the fifth time that morning. “There’s no reason to stay together. With our dreams shielded from their eyes, they’ll never find us.”

“Never is a very long time, Chavah!” Lilit gazed off in the direction of a few trees, trying to decide their best direction.

Qayin had spent the morning behind them, following like a mongrel dog they’d found on the side of the road. The trees were farther away from them than they appeared. It’d be more than a day to reach them.

Chavah took a long breath before stopping and turning her sister. “We can’t run forever. Between the two of us, we can make a safe place to hide. One person can move more quickly than three, and we both know that I have the best chance of getting them to back off.”

“No.”

Lilit walked away from her sister and headed toward the trees.

The rest of the day continued in the same way. Chavah tried to tell Lilit that they needed to split up. Lilit refused to hear any of the arguments. Chavah backed down, or Lilit walked away. Qayin watched the tree line slowly grow closer. Perhaps there’d be monkeys in the trees. His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t told the sisters yet about the angels.

When the sun set, they had nothing with which to make a fire. Usually, Chavah and Lilit slept side-by-side to keep watch during the night.

That night, they slept apart.

Qayin was unsurprised in the morning when Chavah was gone.

 

* * *

 

Lilit was quiet for days. They approached the tree line, paused for a day, and moved on. There had been monkeys. Qayin’s belly no longer rumbled. He’d have to talk to Lilit, but not yet.

“I’ve never been this far from home before,” he said, hoping for any kind of conversation to break the monotony.

“When did you know you wanted to be a farmer?” she replied.

“What?”

“A farmer. You worked with the land for a long time. When did you know that you wanted to do that? You’re smart and strong. You could have hunted.”

It was true. He’d always been lean, quick on his feet. “My father was a farmer, as was his. It’s in my blood, I guess.” Qayin tried not to laugh at the turn of phrase. “It gets into you. There’s a kind of power that comes from working with the earth. You can coax anything from it if you try.”

Lilit knelt in the red-brown dirt at their feet and raked her fingers through it. It crumbled apart in the palm and sifted back to the ground. She dug her fingers in deeper, and Qayin thought she might be trying to dig to the other side. “When you get to know the land, you can talk to it, you know?”

He knew. “There’s a relationship between you and the Mother. If you’re sweet to her, she’ll help you. She’ll feed your family and have plenty to spare for the marketplace. It’s like magic.” He sat on the ground beside her.

“Almost,” Lilit agreed. She curled her fingers closed beneath the loose, crumbling dirt, and the plain shook in front of them. Had Qayin been standing, he’d have fallen. A crack appeared in the ground between them, a small split at first. It spread and grew. Tiny strands ran out in all directions the earth splintered into little pieces. They bisected and intersected one another, leaving him on one side of the largest rift and her on the other. Behind them, the ground began to fall away as a steep slope pushed them both into the air high above the trees they’d left behind. Qayin know that if his heart were still beating, it’d race, but it sat silently in his chest, just as it had since the first night with the stranger, and still the mountain grew.

When the ground quieted again, they were sitting on top of a peak that had changed the face of the plain.

 

* * *

 

In her dreams, Lilit could always find her sister. No matter the distance, no matter the walls she’d put around the mountain, no matter the forces that were trying to keep them apart, Lilit could find Chavah when they slept. This night, they'd shaped their little haven to look like the river that ran through the open plains behind their home.

Chavah asked as they sat beside the lazily flowing water. “Did you and Qayin find a place?”

“No, but I made one.”

“What did you make?”

Lilit reached into the river and pulled a handful of water up to her face. She reveled in the clean, cool water on her hot, sweaty face. Even in dreams she felt the heat of the day. “A mountain. Chavah, they won’t find us here. I know they can’t. I made it so they wouldn’t and couldn’t. Come back.” She looked at her sister and knew the desperation of her plea was written over her face. “Please come back.”

Chavah put a hand to her sister’s face. “Not yet, Lilit. We can’t stay stuck there forever. I need to find out what they did to us that night when we left the city. I mean, why can we do these things?” She waved her hand around, indicating the dream they’d made together, a place they could build and control and own.

Warily, Lilit asked, “Do you want them to undo it?”

“If it meant that they’d leave us alone, I think so. Don’t you?” Chavah turned back to the river and stared at the little ripples of white they’d created together in their dreams.

Lilit had no answer for her sister. How could she? How could either of them want to give this up? From the time when they were little and given to the temple, they’d always been close, but it had been nothing compare to this. They could always find each other now.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to. I won’t ask for anything we don’t both want.”

“They won’t stop coming after us, though,” Lilit relented. “We didn’t do what they asked, and we don’t really belong here anymore. Who else can do what we do?”

Chavah shrugged. “Nobody. We could, though, you know.”

“Could what? Kill Qayin?”

“Do you know what they did to him?”

Lilit shook her head. “No. I know he wants to tell me, but he hasn’t yet.”

“He’s lost his humanity.”

“Like us.”

“No,” Chavah insisted, “not like us. One of those gods offered him a deal to save our city. That’s why our enemies burned. That’s why we won.”

Lilit stood up and walked a few paces off. “We can’t condemn him for that, Chavah. He saved all the families in our village. We can’t turn him over to them for ending our war.”

Chavah looked up at her sister. “I know.”

“What have you found out other than that? Do you know what happened or at least why they did this to us?”

“No, but I think I know how to find out.”

Lilit turned back.

“One of them is different. You remember in our dream that one who was nice to us? I think he would help us. I’m trying to find him, but I don’t know whether you can find a god that doesn’t want to be found.”

“Why do you think he’d help us?”

Again, Chavah shrugged. “Just a feeling, I guess. He’s come to me a few times to help out. He taught me how to make this place.” She indicated the vast, rolling plains and river around them. “I think he’d help if I could just find him and talk to him on my own terms.”

“So I’m just going to hide in the mountain?”

“What else can we do? I mean, we can hide forever, or you can wait for me while I try to figure this part out.”

“But we always do things together. I don’t know how to do this without you,” Lilit protested.

Chavah stood up and put her arms protectively around her sister. “I know, but you have to let me try. Let me try to do this on my own. I think I can.” She pulled back and looked Lilit in the face. “We have to be our own people sometime, right?”

Lilit made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob and buried her face again in her sister’s shoulder.

They stayed like that until morning when Qayin reached over and shook her awake.


	4. The Power of Blood

Weeks passed in the mountain, but Lilit and Qayin never left it. They lived in a large cave she’d carved into the southern face of the peak and watched the sun rise and set and rise again. Some nights, Lilit dreamt with Chavah and learned what little there was to learn. Mostly, they sat beside the river or swam in oceans they’d never really seen.

During the day, Lilit and Qayin told stories from their lives thus far until it seemed like they’d known one another from childhood.

Then, maybe a moon after they’d come to the mountain, Qayin shook Lilit awake early. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

She shook her head, displeased by the early morning. She’d never told him about her dreams with Chavah, something about them seemed intensely personal. Lilit had no desire to share them. “What is it now?” she asked more sharply than was strictly necessary.

“I need to tell you what they did to me because it’s going to matter a lot pretty soon.”

The cave was dark in spite of the early morning sunrise. Deep in the recesses of the cave, they often slept late.

“The Red Stranger, that’s what I’ve started calling him in my head, he offered-”

Lilit cut him off, waving her hand drowsily and  vaguely in his general direction, “Yeah, I know what he offered you. You already told me.”

“But I didn’t tell you what happened while I was in the desert,” he rebutted petulantly.

She sighed and rubbed at her eyes once more. “Okay, tell me.”

 

* * *

 

Qayin stumbled through the open plains, hot sun beating hard on his back and neck. He’d be burnt for sure. High above, carrion birds circled, watching and waiting for their prey to give in to the inevitable. They didn’t worry him. The night was what worried him.

As the day pressed on, he found a small grove of half-parched trees to rest under. Their sparse branches stretched out and created a criss-crossing of shade that barely kept the sun from his abused face and neck. Under the trees, Qayin began to wish for death.

“I can help you.”

He looked up. Perched in the tree was a beautiful man. He had long, shining black hair and golden eyes that seemed to cut straight through whatever they looked at.

Qayin cowered against the trunk of the tree. “What do you want?”

“I want the gift you were given back.”

“What gift?”

The man floated down from the tree and hung midair in front of the farmer. “The strength and life you were given were never his to give. You have no right to such gifts. Give them to me.”

“I cannot. I don't know how.” Qayin felt himself curling up in fright. How could he possibly give what he didn’t even truly understand. He couldn’t.

“If you give them to me, you won’t be harmed.” The golden eyes flamed hot for a moment then cooled as the stranger took in Qayin’s huddled form. “I cannot say you’ll receive the same offer from those who’ll come after me. I’m kinder by far than any of them.”

Qayin doubted this greatly. “I don’t know how to give you what you want.”

The beautiful stranger reached out to Qayin and placed a hand on his chest. He must have felt the same emptiness the farmer had been running from, for he pulled back his hand in fright and anger. “So you accepted everything he offered, didn’t you, human?”

“I did what I needed to do to save my people.”

“Would you take it back?” the man asked sharply.

Straightening, Qayin knew that finally here was a question he could answer. “No. I did what I set out to do and saved the families in my village. I would not take it back.”

Sneering, the man stretched his arms wide. In his open palm appeared balls of white flame, hotter than the sun at midday. “You will regret this, human. Qayin of the Plains, I place my curse upon you. May you ever fear the flame that brings life to those around you.”

The two balls of flame exploded from the stranger’s hands, and the trees erupted in a conflagration that seemed to touch the heavens. When they died down, the man was gone, and Qayin was once again alone on the plain.

 

* * *

 

“Each night following, I was visited by another strange and terrifying vision of power and judgement. Each night, they asked me the same question. They told me strange and terrible things, but each time their predictions didn’t come. I fear neither fire nor sunlight, and I still can eat food and enjoy its taste. Only the prediction about to blood is true.” Qayin looked at the ground at his feet. “The Red Stranger came into my dreams later and told me the visitors couldn’t actually affect me like they’d wanted, but that their curses would live in my blood forever. Anywhere I go, it’ll go with me.”

Outside the cave, the sun had risen to mid-morning, but neither of them moved to leave it.

Eventually, Lilit asked, “So, what do you need?”

For the first time, Qayin’s face turned red. Even in the dim light, Lilit could see the change in color. He stared at the sand under their feet. “I need blood.”

“What happens if you don’t get it?

He shook his head. “Nothing good.”

“I can create a whole bunch of things, but I’m really not sure I can create life like that, Qayin.”

“I know. I was thinking we could leave the mountain, at least for a while.”

Lilit cut him off. “No. That’s not happening. Chavah left just specifically to figure out what’s hunting us. You know that, whatever they are, they’ll find us as soon as we leave the safety of the mountain.”

Qayin nodded and stood up. Without looking back, he left the cave. Lilit watched him walk into the sunshine.

 

* * *

 

Three nights later, Qayin crouched near the foot of the mountain. His voice carried out into the night. It echoed off the trees and rocks that littered the sides of their mountain. Without words, he called to the animals nearby, hoping something would hear him.

“Whom’re you calling to?” Lilit asked, walking up beside him.

“Whatever’s out there.”

“Has it worked before?”

“Not well,” he admitted. “I caught a monkey a while ago.”

Overhead, the waxing moon hung bright and heavy in the sky. Lilit sat down and picked up a rock from the ground at her side. She tossed it through the transparent wall that kept out whatever was out there.

Almost an hour later, a small, furry animal that neither could identify sniffed its way to the foot of the mountain. Qayin reached out and took it. Lilit watched him rip into its flesh and drain it of what blood he could. When he was done, he handed it to her so she could cook it for them.

"How long will that hold you?” Lilit asked as she turned the animal over and over in her hands, trying to discern the most effective way of skinning it.

“A little while, perhaps a quarter moon. It wasn’t much.”

She nodded. The animal’s skin split cleanly along the line of its spine and fell away. Lilit put it into the tanned leather pouch she usually slung from her waist and headed back up the mountain. “Are you coming?”

With a last look back into the night, Qayin joined her.

 

 


	5. Ascendant

Lilit threw the coal-tipped pen to the ground. “It’s been a year,” she yelled to anyone within earshot, which could only mean Qayin. He, of course, wasn’t anywhere nearby. In fact, she was pretty sure that he’d recently gotten into the habit of staying as far from her as he could, possibly just from some semblance of personal space.

In a fit of energy, she ran out of the cave in search of Qayin.

Over the year, they’d worn a track around the island. It sloped slowly but surely in a spiral around the mountain from summit to foot and back again. She found Qayin at the waterfall on the eastern face. He stood in the lake, water up to his waist. The light reflected off the surface sharpened his dark, angled features.

“It’s been a year,” Lilit said again, glaring at him.

“So you said.”

“I haven’t heard from her in a year. Something’s wrong.” How on earth was he so composed? This was not a calm matter!

“Then go after her.”

Lilit let out a sound somewhere between a huff and a full-on growl. “She’d kill me if she found out.”

Qayin didn’t bother to mention what they both knew. Chavah could only kill someone if she wasn’t dead herself. “What are you going to do, then?”

“Well...” Lilit had thought about this for moons now. “They’re not really after me. Technically, they’re just looking for you, right?”

She could tell that he knew where this was going. “Maybe,” Qayin replied.

“Then it’s really only you who needs to stay on the mountain.”

“That sounds like a really bad idea. Didn’t they send you to find me? Why do you think they wouldn’t be just as interested in finding you as they’re going to be in finding me?”

“Well, I’m a lot stronger than you. Maybe they won’t be able to catch me.”

“Gods.”

“Not the point!” she yelled and threw a handful of dirt at him. It fell into the lake at the base of the waterfall and floated for a moment before sinking beneath the surface. “I think I can keep myself to myself if you can stay safe here.”

Qayin ducked his head under the waterfall, and Lilit waited for him to reemerge.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well what?”

“Can you stay on the mountain and out of trouble?”

He shook his head. Water flew off in all directions, spraying off shoulder-length curls that neither had bothered to cut back. “Of course not. I have no way of maintaining the magic you created that’s keeping us hidden.”

Lilit growled again and headed back to the cave. “You’re impossible,” she shouted back at him over her shoulder.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t a good plan. Nothing about it was a good idea, and Qayin had been trying to tell her that for almost two days. Lilit wasn’t listening.

The moon was high as he tried to argue with her once more. “Maybe Chavah just got lost or something.”

“You can’t get lost from your own dream,” Lilit countered. She’d told him about the dreams a while ago, but Qayin had never really seemed to understand. “Something happened, and I need to go after her. I’m not waiting for you any more. If you don’t agree, I’ll leave you here in the morning, mountain or no.” She knew he had no real choice.

“And explain to me, one more time, just why you think this ridiculous idea of yours is going to work.”

“Because it’s the only thing they cursed you with. I mean, nothing else stuck, right? Just the blood.”

He nodded slowly.

“And we know you can do some kind of magic or something.”

Another nod.

“And it gets stronger after you’ve eaten. Right?”

“Yes, but that could just be… lack of hunger fatigue?” he ventured.

“No. There’s got to be something driving it. This is going to work, Qayin. You’re going to stay here, perfectly safe, and I’m going to go find my sister.”

He really didn’t have much of a choice.

 

* * *

 

The cut on her forearm healed quickly enough. A day or so later, it wasn’t even a scar. She’d left so little of her own blood behind that she barely felt the difference. Off the mountain, finally trying to find Chavah, Lilit felt strong, purposeful.

In the cave, however, Qayin quaked. Lilit’s blood ran through his system, pouring through his veins. Like fire through summer-dry grass, it left a burning path behind. It took three days for him to pick himself up off the floor of the cave. When he did, Qayin felt that he almost understood how Lilit saw the world. There was so much more than he’d ever imagined. He wasn’t going to spend it alone, though. She was gone, but he was determined.

In less than a moon, he too left the mountain, sure that he could protect himself now.

 

* * *

 

Lilit hadn’t returned to the mountain, but Qayin had found the answer they'd both been looking for. Deep in his dreams, he’d found Chavah.

The earth below crawled with his children. They begged gifts and favors of him. Qayin’d had enough. He left them all, not caring an ounce about their fates. They’d find their own ways.

As the rain began to pelt the earth, Qayin found his way back to the hidden mountain. His children hid under the ground, forced there by the curses laid on him lifetimes ago. His mountain, however, stood unchanged by the passage of time.

The waters rose around him, flooding the slopes and washing away the trees and rocks, and Qayin carefully spun his dreams and thoughts and memories out into a thread that would run through the entire mountain. If Lilit came back to find him, she’d find this, and she’d find Chavah. Once upon a time, they’d saved him. He owed them this much.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks very much to Q-Know-Who for the beta on this piece. There will be three 10-15 chapter sequels to it, and I'm currently more than halfway through writing the first. Stick around to read three views of the end of the world that go along with this metaplot and thank for reading!


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